Leo Blair. Former lecturer. Born August 4, 1923. Died November 16, 2012. Aged 89

Leo Blair. Former lecturer. Born August 4, 1923. Died November 16, 2012. Aged 89

A LONG-TERM Tory supporter who joined the Labour party only in 1995 Leo Blair’s early life was marked by poverty and family mystery before he became a well-respected barrister and university law lecturer.

Leo Blair’s own political dreams ended when he suffered a stroke at 40 []

Born Charles Leonard Augustus Parsons in Filey, North Yorkshire, he was the illegitimate son of travelling entertainers Celia Ridgeway and Charles Parsons. They gave him up to Clydeside shipyard worker James Blair and his wife Mary whom they had met while on tour in Glasgow.

After two miscarriages Mary was delighted to raise Leo as her own. He accompanied her on Left-wing rallies and when he left Govan High School he worked as a copy boy on the Communist party newspaper Daily Worker and was secretary of the Scottish Young Communist League from 1938 to 1941.

But for much of his childhood Leo was in the middle of a tug of war between his adoptive parents and biological mother. On more than one occasion Celia tried to reclaim Leo but Mary fought her, once even claiming he was missing, presumed dead during the Second World War. Celia accepted this story and when he returned from active service Leo thought he had been forgotten by her. A year after he was demobbed he changed his name by deed poll to Leo Charles Lynton Blair - names inherited by his youngest son.

I was privileged to have him as a dad

Tony Blair

After studying to be a barrister he took up a post as law lecturer at Durham University. In his spare time he was chairman of the local Conservative Association and an admirer of Margaret Thatcher; politics which he passed on to his sons William and Tony. The latter, aged 12, stood as a Conservative candidate in his school’s mock elections.

Leo’s own political dreams ended when he suffered a stroke at 40.

When Leo was 71 and following publicity surrounding Tony Blair’s leadership, his half-sister Pauline Harding contacted the Blair family about the possibility of meeting her long lost half-brother. Fifty years after they last saw each other Pauline and Leo were reunited. Their other sister Jenefee was too senile to attend.

Last night Tony Blair said: “He was a remarkable man. Raised in a poor part of Glasgow he worked his way up from nothing, with great ambitions dashed by serious illness on the very brink of their fulfilment. He lost my mother, whom he adored, when she was still young. Yet despite it all he remained animated by an extraordinary spirit that was in him until the end.

“I was privileged to have him as a dad.”

Leo’s first wife Hazel, Tony’s mother, died of throat cancer in 1975. His second wife Olwen died in March and he is survived by his two sons and his daughter Sarah.